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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503930">Coda: Found</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/pseuds/eden22'>eden22</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Minimal Loss [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Law Enforcement Pursuing the Winchesters (Supernatural), Profiling the Winchesters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:13:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/pseuds/eden22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The case file arrived in JJ's inbox at 7:30 am on a Tuesday in early March. Five hours later, the mailroom called that the physical files had arrived as well, and she sent around an email to the whole team. By 1:45 pm, they were all settling in around the table in the conference room, curiously eyeing the pile of boxes sitting on the table.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Minimal Loss [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918786</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>400</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Coda: Found</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please see end note for complete list of warnings. </p><p>Thanks again to Britt for the beta and cheerleading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, finally gave in huh?" Morgan asked as he pulled out a chair, and JJ pointed at him without looking away from the items she was setting on the table. </p><p>"Not a word," she warned, finally looking at him as she settled into her own seat, and he held his hands up in surrender. Emily looked down at her coffee to hide her smile. Across the table, Rossi was spinning his phone in circles on the tabletop, while Reid looked at his own coffee like he was already wishing it was bigger. </p><p>"Henrickson sent everything over?" Hotch asked as he walked in, the last to arrive. JJ turned to look at him. </p><p>"Digital and physical files," she confirmed. "Everything he has."</p><p>"The infamous Winchester brothers," Morgan said, pulling a folder from the stack in front of him at random and flipping it open. He made a face at whatever he saw there, quickly flipping it shut again. "Can't believe Henrickson finally wore you down, JJ," he continued, looking over at her. JJ sighed, and Emily felt a pang of sympathy for her coworker. She'd been on the receiving end of more than one campaign from an enthusiastic member of law enforcement to try and bring their team's attention to a case they were working on – it was never an easy situation to navigate. Especially if people were dying. Which–</p><p>"Well, he's not wrong when he says he's hit a dead end," JJ said. "They haven't had a solid lead on them in months. And after they escaped from prison in Wyoming, his emails got a lot more… insistent." Morgan shot a sympathetic grimace at her, a kind of apology for his earlier ribbing. </p><p>"Ok," Hotch said, bringing everyone's attention back to him. "We're going to be trying to look at this case with fresh eyes. Try not to think about what you already know about the Winchesters, anything you've heard from Henrickson or elsewhere. We want to build the profile up from scratch." His team nodded, Emily casting a glance towards the pile of boxes in the middle of the table, the stacks of folders already sitting outside of them. She'd heard about the Winchesters, they all had, were at least passably familiar with anyone who cracked the most wanted list, but unlike JJ and Hotch she'd never actually had a look at their case files. After all, the Winchesters didn't fall into the category of unsub that the BAU specialized in – they weren't unsubs at all, really, which was the whole point. The FBI were very aware of who they were, and Henrickson and his team were generally capable of building a solid profile on their own, without the added expertise of their team. Still, if he had reached as hopeless of a dead end as JJ had made it sound like he had, she could understand why their team was now being brought in to lend fresh eyes to the case. </p><p>"Garcia, do you want to start us off?" Hotch asked, bringing Emily's attention back to the front of the room. Garcia nodded, stepping in front of the screen at one end of the room. </p><p>"Our subjects are Sam and Dean Winchester," she said. "Born May 2, 1983 and January 24, 1979, respectively. Their mother, Mary, died in a house fire on November 2, 1983 in Lawrence, Kansas, when Sam was six months old. Though the fire was eventually ruled accidental, the reports from the local PD indicates that did also investigate the possibility that she may have been murdered prior to the fire starting, with their primary suspect being her husband, John. The coroner’s report that I was able to find indicated that there were signs of a cut to her stomach occurring before the fire, but the body was too badly damaged by the fire for them to make a definitive call either way and no charges were laid. Less than a month later John, a former marine who had served in Vietnam," she clicked a button and a faded photograph appeared, obviously scanned from film at some point, showing a smiling man with two small boys, "took his sons and disappeared." </p><p>Emily squinted at the photograph, frowning. The quality was terrible, but she could swear she had seen the father, John, somewhere before. Next to her, Reid made a small noise, but when she glanced over at him she found him just looking at Garcia, the same intense look of concentration on his face that he reserved for every case they handled. Mentally shrugging, she turned back to Garcia, who was continuing to outline what little they knew about the Winchester brothers' early life. And it was very little, Emily realized as Garcia continued to talk. </p><p>"There are few official records of the Winchester brothers between 1983 and 2001. Without knowing where they were living, it's impossible to subpoena their academic records, and what few records we do have access to indicate they lived a very nomadic life. The handful of locations that I was able to track down can generally be attributed to either their father being arrested or the boys being taken into the custody of child protective services," Garcia clicked another button, and a mugshot of the same man from before, though now looking significantly older, appeared on the screen. Emily ran her eyes over his face, again struck with the same sense of familiarity. The man’s face and body carried clear markers of having lived a hard life – a mass of scar tissue just visible above the collar of his shirt being the most notable one – but that wasn't the thing that was catching her attention. It was a memory, she was sure, just–</p><p>"John never spent any time in prison," Garcia's words brought Emily's attention back to the other woman, who was also glancing up at the screen, "and most of his arrests were of the misdemeanor variety. Public intoxication, vandalism, trespassing. There were a couple of instances I was able to find where local police had suspected him of being involved in more serious crimes, ranging from arson to murder, but he always skipped town before an arrest could be made or any charges laid." </p><p>Garcia clicked over to the next screen, and Emily wasn't able to stop the sharp inhale of breath that slipped from her lips. Her coworkers turned to look at her, but Emily was too busy staring at the screen to take in their confused expressions. Staring back at her through the ripple of digitization were two serious looking boys standing in the desert, both wearing plaid shirts far too large for them, staring blankly into the camera. <i>Sam and Dean,</i> she thought. </p><p>"Prentiss?" Rossi asked. </p><p>"I know them," she said, finally dragging her eyes away from the screen to look around the room, taking in the puzzled expressions of the other members of her team before she finally landed on Reid, who was already beginning to look guilty. "You knew," she said, voice accusing. </p><p>"I suspected," Reid admitted. </p><p>"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked.</p><p>"I just–" Reid started, before Hotch interrupted him. </p><p>"What's going on?" he asked, tone dangerous, and as one Emily and Reid turned towards him. </p><p>"Sam and Dean," she said, and Hotch gave her a blank look in return. </p><p>"1993. Durango, Colorado," Reid supplied. </p><p>"The cult," Emily continued. "Reid and I got caught up in a standoff with the police." Hotch's eyes widened with recognition, looking at the screen and then back to his agents. </p><p>"They were there?" he inferred. Emily nodded. </p><p>"It was bothering me," she admitted. "I thought I recognized John from somewhere, but I couldn't place him, not until I saw that photo," she nodded her head towards the screen. Garcia glanced down at the tablet in her hand. </p><p>"Sam and Dean Winchester, July, 1994. Taken by their foster parents in Doña Ana, New Mexico." </p><p>"That would have been about a year after the ranch," Emily said, doing the math in her head. </p><p>"You recognized them as well?" Hotch asked, looking past her. She turned as well, taking in the slightly guilty look still lingering on Reid's face. </p><p>“I put it together when him and his brother made it onto the most wanted list,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I would have, though, if Rossi and I hadn’t met Sam Winchester again in 2002, when he was twenty," he said. Emily turned to the other agent, but Rossi looked just as surprised at the additional information as the rest of them.</p><p>"We did?" he asked. Reid nodded. </p><p>"At Stanford University," he said. "We were doing a presentation there." Rossi's expression remained blank. Reid just shook his head. </p><p>"It wasn't a particularly memorable conversation," he said. "He didn't do anything weird, just wanted to ask about the BAU. Said he was considering all his options." </p><p>"So when he made the most wanted list you recognized him," JJ said. "You knew who he was." The guilty look on Reid's face took on a slightly defiant tone. </p><p>"I contacted Henrickson," he said. "He said he appreciated my input but he had a witness who placed John Winchester on the other side of the country at the time that Emily and I met him in Colorado. He declined my offer to send him the case file." </p><p>"Ok, enough," Hotch interrupted. "Reid, we'll talk about this more later, after Garcia has finished her walk through. JJ," he said, turning to the other agent, "have the files from that case pulled, we'll need to add it to the Winchester's files." JJ nodded, already pulling out her phone and typing into it. Hotch turned back to Garcia. "Garcia," he said. Garcia nodded at him, looking slightly thrown as she looked back down at her tablet. </p><p>"Um, yes, ok. Ok. Uh, 1994. That was the longest the Winchesters spent in foster care, almost five months. John had disappeared, left them alone in a motel in Las Cruces, New Mexico. They ended up in foster care after Dean was picked up for solicitation in late March. Neither of them would tell the cops anything about where their father had gone, or how long ago he'd left them, though their foster mother later told their caseworker that she had overheard an argument between the boys where Sam had been attempting to convince his brother that their father was probably dead." </p><p>"Dean would have been what, sixteen?" Morgan said, his expression blank but his voice hard. Garcia glanced down at the tablet. </p><p>"Fifteen," she corrected with a grimace. "Sam was eleven, when this photo was taken. They were handed over to the custody of someone purporting to be a distant relative less than a week after." </p><p>"Purporting?" Rossi asked. Garcia nodded. </p><p>"The identity was solid enough to hold until the courts released Sam and Dean into the custody of a man claiming to be a Robert Winchester. By the time they figured out he had faked the records though, him and the boys were long gone." </p><p>"Was it a kidnapping?" Morgan asked, frowning. Garcia shook her head. </p><p>"According to the statements taken at the time, Sam and Dean were both thrilled when they were told that the man, Robert, had petitioned the courts for custody. That was part of the reason that the approval went through so smoothly, how enthusiastic both of them were to be reunited with him, whoever he was." </p><p>"So was John dead?" Emily asked, thinking back to the blank eyed man who had tied her to a chair in a basement and tortured her for hours, the man who had commanded his sons with the cold precision of a soldier in war. Garcia shook her head again. </p><p>"As of 2003, he was still alive," she said. "He was picked up for grave desecration in Odessa, Texas in February of that year." </p><p>"Grave desecration?" Rossi asked with a raised eyebrow. </p><p>"Oh you have no idea how weird this rabbit hole gets," Garcia warned. </p><p>"Do we have any other records of Sam and Dean as children?" Hotch asked, pulling them back on track. </p><p>"Not many," Garcia said. "Aside from the five months in 1994, they were also placed into state custody in 1987, 1991, twice in 1996, and 1997. In 1998 Dean Winchester turned 18, and his father transferred custody of Sam to his oldest son. After that, they seem to have avoided any further time in state custody. The only other record I was able to find prior to 2001 is when Dean Winchester received his GED in 1999." </p><p>"What landed them in foster care?" Reid asked. Emily glanced at him, wondered if he was thinking, as she was, of the boys that they had met, already hard, already dangerous, but still so painfully young. </p><p>"Ok, this is where it gets really sad… they were taken into custody largely on suspicion of physical abuse and neglect on the part of John," Garcia said. “In 1987, the first time they were taken out of their father’s custody, they were placed into foster care for two months because Dean admitted to one of his teachers that he hadn't eaten in two days because he'd given his little brother the last of their food. 1991, they ended up in foster care again after a motel manager reported that their father hadn't been back to the room in almost two weeks, though the room had been paid for for the whole month, up front, in cash. In 1996, a teacher called social services when she spotted Dean in a grocery store after school one day. Apparently John had called the school, claiming Dean was sick with the flu for almost a week. In the report, the teacher described him as looking like someone had tried to put his head through a wall,” Garcia clicked over, and the photo of Sam and Dean, so young and so serious, was replaced by an older teenager, barely recognizable as Dean not due to age or time, but because his face was so swollen and bruised that it almost hurt to look at. His green eyes were still visible though, staring straight at the camera, defiance obvious in his gaze even through the years. Garcia took a deep breath, continued. “As far as I can tell, after this incident, Dean dropped out of school entirely. The second case in 1996 happened a couple months later, in an entirely different state, when a teacher reported them after Sam got his shirt pulled off of him while playing football in gym class. Said it looked like someone had taken a whip to his back,” Garcia again clicked to another screen, and a photo of a skinny teenage boy facing away from the camera filled the screen, gangly with growth, though Emily suspected that the skinniness couldn’t be entirely attributed to that. More attention grabbing, though, were the red welts covering his back. The teacher hadn’t been far off in his assessment, Emily thought as she looked at the wounds. They definitely weren’t done by a belt, or anything else that a parent might easily grab to hit their child though – but weren’t otherwise easily recognizable as something else. They were broken through in places, scabbed over with the occasional line of stitches, and accompanied with the kind of deep bruising that Emily knew from experience would make every single movement he made incredibly painful. Emily couldn’t believe he’d even attempted to play football with those kinds of injuries, much less walk. It spoke to the kind of experience with existing through and despite excruciating pain that made her mind want to shy away from information about the lives of those two boys that conveyed. </p><p>“Fuck,” Rossi whispered across from her, and Emily couldn’t do anything but agree, her eyes turning back to Garcia as the other woman visibly steeled herself to continue. Clicking over, the torso of Sam Winchester once again filled the screen, though this time he was facing forward, the same defiance that had been on his brother’s face obvious on his as well. The reason that the photo was taken without a shirt was immediately obvious – fresh bruises covered most of his left side, including his arm. It was also obvious how many additional scars the teenager had gained over the years – long lines of cuts, what looked like some sort of bite on one of his hips, and what was clearly a bullet wound through his right shoulder. There were also matching silvered scars around both of his wrists, like he had been struggling against restraints so hard that he’d cut himself open. Emily took a hard breath in through her nose.</p><p>“In 1997,” Garcia said, “which is the last incident we have on record, Sam showed up to school with four broken ribs. They only found out because he fainted in the cafeteria at lunch. In that case, it was only Sam that was removed from John’s custody." </p><p>“Why were either of them ever put back in his custody,” Morgan said, but they all knew it wasn’t a real question, were all too familiar with the failures of systems overworked, underfunded, and full of holes for vulnerable children to slip through. No one said anything, just sat in silence for a long minute as Garcia visibly pulled herself back together after everything that she had read. Emily knew how she felt, her own stomach twisting at the story those few reports had told, the even larger story told through the photographs of the brothers. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of Sam’s face, the anger in his expression, the surprising lack of fear. She had suspected, back on the ranch, what sort of father John was, but having it confirmed so vividly was another thing. <i>And this was only what was reported, what made it onto the official record,</i> she thought again, and fought the urge to shiver. </p><p>At the front of the room, Garcia had apparently managed to brace herself to continue, as she clicked through to another photo of teenage Dean Winchester, though Emily would guess that he was actually slightly younger than he’d been in the last photograph of him to appear on the screen. In sharp contrast to the previous photo, this version of Dean was smiling, his arm slung around a teenage girl wearing a matching grin, his face whole and round with health and happiness. </p><p>"In 1995 Dean also spent two months in a boys home in Hurleyville, New York. He was caught trying to steal peanut butter and bread from a corner store." There was a moment of silence as they sat with the implications of that charge. "Apparently the local police were able to reach John, but he told them that they could just, quote, 'let him rot in jail'." Garcia made a face that said what she thought of that comment coming from a father, before she continued. "The man who ran the boys home, Sonny Gibbons, reported that Dean was a good kid, hardworking and smart. He indicated that he'd be happy to have Dean stay there long term."</p><p>"What happened?" JJ asked. </p><p>"His father finally showed up," Garcia said. "And Dean went with him." </p><p>"Jesus," JJ said, her expression full of sadness as she looked up at the smiling boy on the screen above them. "They really didn't have a chance, did they?" No one commented on that, and Garcia clicked over to the next photo. </p><p>"After Dean took custody of Sam in 1998, there’s no other records of the two of them until 2001, when Sam was accepted to Stanford University on a fully funded scholarship." From the screen, a grinning Sam Winchester looked down at them, a flush high on his cheeks, crowded into the frame with two other teenage boys wearing Stanford sweaters. Rossi made a small noise of recognition, almost at the same time as Morgan let out a low whistle. </p><p>"Full ride," he said. "Smart kid." Next to Emily, Reid made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Morgan glanced at him. </p><p>"He was quoting full bible verses to me in latin when he was ten," Reid explained. “Smart might be a bit of an understatement.” Morgan raised an eyebrow at him before Garcia cleared her throat, and they all turned back to her. </p><p>"There was no sign of Dean that I was able to find for the four years that Sam was at Stanford, but we have plenty on Sam during those years. Very active in campus politics, volunteered at the local animal shelter, maintained a near perfect GPA, on track to get into law school. From 2003 to 2005, he was also living with a girlfriend, a woman named Jessica Moore," she clicked to the next slide, a young blonde woman grinning at the camera, a man recognizable as Sam standing next to her, his arm around her shoulder. <i>Always with the long sleeves,</i> Emily thought, looking at the photo. <i>Both of them, always hiding, always covered up.</i> She couldn’t help but wonder what his girlfriend had thought of his scars, what he would have told her about them. "Her family met Sam quite a few times, described him as smart, likeable, and very in love with Jessica. That's actually the general consensus, from his friends, professors, anyone he had contact with over those four years that were willing to give a statement – that Sam was smart, likeable, friendly."</p><p>"Why do I feel like this is heading somewhere especially awful," Rossi said.</p><p>"Because you've been doing this job for a hundred years," Morgan answered before Garcia could say anything. There was a thump, like Rossi had kicked at him under the table, but Morgan just grinned at him before turning back to Garcia.  </p><p>"Sorry doll face," he said. She shook her head, smiling at both of them, though it quickly faded when she glanced back down at her tablet. <i>Rossi's right,</i> Emily thought in her head as she watched Garcia's lips press tightly together. <i>Whatever's coming next is going to be bad.</i> </p><p>With a click of the button, the screen was taken over by a burnt out apartment building, and Emily's heart sank in her chest. </p><p>"On November 2, 2005, neighbors called 911 to report a fire in Sam and Jessica's apartment. When the fire department arrived, they found Sam outside, being held back from going back into the building by an unidentified man. It took them several hours to put the fire out, at which point Jessica Moore's body was found in their bedroom." </p><p>"Wait, November 2nd?" JJ asked. "Wasn't that when their mother died?" Garcia nodded. </p><p>"Yes," she said, "but it gets creepier. When the autopsy was conducted on Jessica's body, the coroner reported that her stomach had been cut open prior to the fire being set." </p><p>"Set?" Emily asked. </p><p>"The fire department wasn't able to find any trace of accelerants," Garcia said, "but they were able to determine that the fire started in the bedroom, and wasn't the result of faulty wiring or a gas leak." </p><p>"So Sam…?" Rossi asked. </p><p>"He was never charged with anything," Garcia said. "Largely based on his behaviour the night of, and the fact that the coroner again wasn't able to make any definitive assessment of the cut to her stomach." </p><p>"What do you mean, definitive assessment?" Emily asked. </p><p>"Unable to determine time of injury or depth of the cut, due to damage from the fire," Garcia read off of her tablet. "Unable to determine weapon. Unable to determine if the wound was the cause of death." There was a long moment of silence. </p><p>"So Sam's girlfriend dies on the anniversary of the night his mother died, if not in the exact same way, at least very close," JJ summarized. "The man that was with him, do we have any idea who that was?" Garcia shook her head. </p><p>"No idea," she said. "But a week after the funeral, Sam left Palo Alto, telling his friends that he was going on a road trip with his brother." </p><p>"Why does that sound so ominous," Emily said. Garcia shot her a look. </p><p>"Remember how I said this case gets really weird?" she said. She didn't wait for an answer before she clicked to the next slide. "Welcome to weird." On the screen, amongst a chaos of glass and blood, was the body of Dean Winchester, dead eyes open and staring back at them. </p><p>"Wait, I thought Dean was alive?" Rossi said. Garcia held up a finger, reading from the tablet in front of her. </p><p>"On March 7, 2006, police in St. Louis shot a man that they believed had tortured and killed two women and kidnapped and tortured a third, Rebecca Warren. She only escaped thanks to the police arriving at her home, interrupting a man matching Dean Winchester's description in the act of torturing her. Rebecca, who went to Stanford with Sam, said that she had called Sam for help after her brother was accused in the murder of the first woman, his girlfriend Emily McLaughlin." She clicked over to a slide showing the two bodies of the women killed. Emily scanned the bodies, taking in the bruises and cuts, similar enough to have most likely been done by the same person.</p><p>"You said matching Dean's description," Reid said. "But it wasn't Dean." </p><p>"Apparently not," Garcia said. "But he looked enough like him that Rebecca identified the body as Dean, and that's the name he was buried under." </p><p>"So, the world's unluckiest case of mistaken identity?" Morgan asked, voice incredulous. </p><p>"Unless you believe in evil twins…" Garcia said, trailing off as she clicked to the next slide, a video play button partially covering the familiar face of the man sitting in what could only be a police interrogation room. "November 9, 2006, Dean Winchester is arrested in Baltimore, Maryland and is charged with the murder of Tony and Karen Giles, who both had their throats slit, a day apart from each other."</p><p>"So which one would be the evil twin?" Rossi commented dryly. Garcia ignored him, continuing in her recitation of the case. </p><p>"The charges were actually dropped in this case, after an internal investigation found that a detective in the department, Pete Sherida, had killed them to cover up the fact that he was stealing heroin from evidence. He'd been using the Giles to launder the money from the sales, and killed them after he also murdered his fence, fearing that they were going to turn on him. <i>But</i>," Garcia said, "even though the charges didn't stick, there were a couple of things that came out of this arrest. The first was that the Baltimore police actually fingerprinted Dean, and uploaded his fingerprints to the federal database. He had already been released, and disappeared out of town, by the time the results came back, but there were a dozen possible hits linking him to other crime scenes including ones where grave desecration occurred." </p><p>"Grave desecration? Again?" Morgan said. </p><p>"I really don't like where this is going," JJ added. </p><p>"You and me both," Garcia said. "The other thing to come out of the arrest was this video." Tapping a button on her tablet, the video on screen jerked to life. </p><p>"My name is Dean Winchester," said the man on the screen, staring straight into the camera with a slight smile. "I'm an Aquarius. I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women. I did not kill anyone. But I know who did. Or rather what did. Of course I can't say for sure, 'cause our investigation was interrupted."</p><p>"Investigation?" Emily heard Reid say quietly behind her, but she didn't turn around, too busy examining Dean. She could see traces of the boy she'd met in his eyes, even more in the way he held himself; wary, ready. Despite the ostensibly grim situation he found himself in, there was a lightness in his expression, like he already knew they weren't going to be able to keep him there. That train of thought was abruptly derailed by the next words out of his mouth: "But our working theory is that we're looking for some kind of vengeful spirit."</p><p>"What?" Morgan said, at almost exactly the same time that someone on the video, off screen, said, <i>excuse me? </i></p><p>"You know, Casper the blood-thirsty ghost?" Dean continued, and Emily leaned forward in her seat, her eyes flicking over Dean's face, his body. "Tony Giles saw it. I'll bet you cash money Karen did too. But see, the interesting thing is the word it leaves behind. For some reason, it's trying to tell us something. But communicating across the veil – it ain't easy. Sometimes the spirits – they get things jumbled. You remember ‘redrum’? Same concept. It could be word fragments... other times, it's an anagram.” On the screen, Dean pulled a piece of paper from inside his jacket, covered in writing, though whatever it said wasn’t quite legible on the grainy footage. “See, first we thought this was a name, Dana Shulps. But now, we think it’s a street. Ashland. Whatever's going on, I'm betting it started there.” On the recording, Dean smiled, a bright, open thing, and Emily had to stop herself from shivering. A man suddenly swung into frame, yelling at Dean. One of the detectives involved in the case, Emily assumed, probably with some personal involvement, based on the violence of his reaction. When he brought up the St. Louis murders though, Dean just smiled. “Oh yeah, that wasn't me,” he said, turning back to the camera. “That was a shapeshifter that only looked like me.” The video ended there, frozen on Dean Winchester's smiling face, his empty eyes. </p><p>"Ok, what the fuck," Morgan said. </p><p>"I second that," Rossi said. </p><p>"Shapeshifters? Ghosts?" Morgan said. "I knew there were some occult elements to the Winchester case but this is just…" he trailed off, not sure how to describe it. </p><p>"Their father believed– believes, in monsters," Emily said. The team turned to look at her. "That was what he was torturing me about, back in Colorado. He thought I might be a demon, or some other creature." </p><p>"So John is convinced that supernatural evils actually exist, and he teaches that to his sons," JJ reasoned. </p><p>"Makes sense," Rossi said, "though it still doesn't explain the weird doppelganger in St. Louis." </p><p>"It gets weirder," Garcia warned. </p><p><i>"How?"</i> Morgan asked, and Garcia raised an eyebrow, clicking over to the next photo, a still from local news footage showing Dean leaning out the front door of a bank, gun trained on the security guard he was pushing out in front of him. </p><p>"Oh good," Morgan said, leaning back in his chair.</p><p>"January 25, 2007, Sam and Dean take part in a bank robbery in Milwaukee, Illinois." </p><p>"That's a new one," JJ said. </p><p>"The robbery was actually started by a local man, Ronald Reznick. It appeared that he just happened to have the bad luck to target a bank that the Winchesters were inside of. They somehow managed to take control of the situation, killing a bank employee and an unidentified Jane Doe before they escaped by disguising themselves as SWAT officers. They left the men they stole the uniforms from alive though."</p><p>"And the original robber?" Reid asked. </p><p>"Shot dead by the police," Garcia said. "The statements from the hostages indicated that Sam and Dean were able to convince him to hand control over to them prior to his death though. The weird thing though, was there was no money or anything of other value taken from the bank." </p><p>"I can kinda see why Henrickson is losing his mind over this one," Morgan said. "Jesus, this is all over the place." </p><p>"Only one more," Garcia promised. "On April 26, 2007, Sam and Dean were arrested and charged with breaking and entering at a small museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. Based on evidence gathered through Dean's fingerprints, and that Henrickson had managed to dig up while attempting to track them down, Dean was booked on charges of mail fraud, credit card fraud, grave desecrations, breaking and entering, armed robbery, kidnapping, and three counts of first degree murder. Sam's charges were similar, with the exception of the kidnapping and murder. However, this was also the first time that he had ever been arrested and fingerprinted.”</p><p>“They came up with a match?” Emily guessed.</p><p>“They had a match,” Garcia confirmed. Another click, and a smiling woman appears on screen. "Madison Vaugier, 23, was found shot dead in her apartment in San Francisco, California earlier that same year. Her case had no leads until Sam Winchester's fingerprints were entered into the federal database, and returned a perfect match for prints found in her apartment," Garcia swallowed, then continued. "The original autopsy had also revealed that she had had intercorse the night she was murdered."</p><p>"So he raped her, and then shot her?" JJ said, voice hard. Garcia shook her head. </p><p>"The coroner found no sign of force, either internally or externally," she said. "They also used a condom. It doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t coerced in some other way, but…" </p><p>"It does make it less likely,” Morgan said. “So he possibly seduced her, then murdered her." There was a moment of silence as they all digested this new detail, before Rossi spoke.</p><p>"Any more?" He asked. Garcia shook her head again. </p><p>"That's all," she said, clicking to a final screen, two mugshots side by side. "They escaped from Green River County Detention Center after spending less than a week in custody, and there's been no sign of them since."</p><p>"Which is why Henrickson asked us to build a fresh profile," Hotch added. "It's been almost four months without any sign of them, and he’s getting worried that they might be dropping bodies while he tries to figure out their location or pattern." He cast his gaze over his team, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Emily nodded when he looked at her, turning back to the centre of the table as Hotch and Garcia both finally sat down at the table. </p><p>"So, the pair of them grew up without a stable home environment, were frequently moved, neglected, and physically abused," Morgan started, before glancing at Garcia. "Any signs of sexual abuse?" Garcia shook her head. </p><p>"They checked, a couple of times over the years when they ended up in custody, but there was never any sign that their father, or any other adult in their life, was abusing either of them sexually." </p><p>"Dean spent at least part of their childhood engaging in underage sex work though," JJ said. "It's unlikely that that one solicitation charge was an isolated incident." </p><p>"I would guess that that was probably survival sex work, rather than something his father was involved with,” Emily said, thinking back to the way Dean had behaved with his brother when she had met him. “Especially given all the instances we know of where their father left them alone without enough money or food. When Reid and I met them, in 1993, he was obviously very protective of Sam. I’d have said back then that he would do anything for his brother." Reid nodded his agreement with her assessment. </p><p>"Based on the way he acted during the standoff, I would say that he was more than ready, even at fourteen, to kill to protect his brother," he said. </p><p>"Ok wait, remind me about the details of that case," Morgan interrupted. "I remember you got taken hostage by some cultists, but they weren't religious?" Emily shook her head. </p><p>"Some, but not the group as a whole,” she confirmed. “They believed that there are monsters, literal monsters, out in the world, and that they were uniquely equipped to handle them." </p><p>"They called the police civilians," Reid added. He paused, clearly thinking. "In the tape from Baltimore,” he said slowly, “Dean also framed what him and his brother were doing there as an investigation." </p><p>"Huh," Rossi said. "Ok. And the religious element?" Reid and Emily exchanged a look. </p><p>"Dean and John weren't religious,” Reid said, “but I would describe Sam as devout." Rossi hummed, a frown creasing his forehead.</p><p>"Going back to the beginning," JJ said. "Do we think John killed his wife?" There was a moment of silence as the team considered the question.</p><p>"I don't know that we can say for sure either way," Emily said slowly, thinking of the man that had dug a knife into her arm over and over again. "But I think whether he killed her, or someone else did, or it was just an accident, we can safely say either her death or something occurring just before it was the stressor that provoked his delusions about monsters. And I think by the time we met him, in 1993, he <i>had</i> killed." Reid nodded his agreement, then paused. </p><p>"He was a vet," he countered, "what we saw in him then might have been from his time in Vietnam." Emily thought about that for a minute.</p><p>"Could have been," she finally allowed. "The torture though, that wasn't from his time in Vietnam. That was more recent, and very practiced. Ritualistic." Morgan scrubbed his hand over his face. </p><p>"Ok, so they're raised to believe that monsters are real, that they can look like people. Whether or not their father killed anyone, he raised them to be capable of it."</p><p>"They were both already extremely comfortable with firearms when we met them," Reid said. "And that was when they were 10 and 14." </p><p>"So they probably only got better with age," Morgan said. "Awesome." </p><p>"They were also extremely isolated from other people, and weren't given the opportunity to form bonds with anyone other than each other," JJ said, glancing at Garcia for confirmation, who nodded. </p><p>"Like I said, the records are spotty but based on what I could find I would say it's unlikely that they ever lived anywhere even as long as a year." </p><p>"So even without the killing they'd probably be dysfunctionally codependent," Morgan said. "Add in the killing…" </p><p>"Sam left though," JJ said. "He went away to university." Morgan shrugged, having no explanation for that yet.</p><p>"He said he was curious about what turned men into monsters," Reid said. "When Rossi and I met him, that's why he said he was interested in what we do." </p><p>"Do you think he was talking about his father?" </p><p>"I thought so at the time," Reid said. "Now…" </p><p>"Now?" JJ prompted. Reid looked up at the two brothers still flickering on the screen, a considering look on his face. </p><p>"Sam was brilliant, friendly, well-liked," he said slowly. Emily straightened slightly in her seat, noticing the other members of their team doing the same. They could all sense where Reid was going with this. "Then, just when he's on the cusp of achieving his dreams and getting into law school, his girlfriend dies in exactly the same way his mother did." </p><p>"You think Dean did it, to bring Sam back to him," Rossi theorized. Reid shook his head. </p><p>"I think Sam did it." Rossi raised an eyebrow at him. </p><p>“Ok, explain that one,” Morgan said. Reid leaned forward, the eyes of his team on him. </p><p>“Dean is fiercely protective of his younger brother, while also buying into his father’s delusions about monsters. Sam, meanwhile, is very intelligent, and also extremely concerned with the concept of salvation and monstrosity. When Sam went away to school, Dean completely disappeared from public record,” he paused, but when no one added anything else, he continued, clearly settling further into his theory the longer he spoke. “The way that Jessica Moore died, the way it mirrored his mother’s death, can’t be a coincidence.” </p><p>“You think he murdered his girlfriend to mimic the inciting incident that set his father on his path,” Emily said, and Reid nodded. </p><p>“Possibly to bring his older brother back to him as well. We’ve thought of it as him getting away from his family to go to school, but what if it was the other way around? He’s younger, but he’s also physically larger and stronger than his brother. He’s also more intelligent, and better educated,” he said. “Dean grew up perfectly obedient and loyal to their father, copying him in every way, up to and including his delusions about monsters. Sam was the one who broke away from their father, who couldn’t stay in that family dynamic anymore as an adult.” </p><p>“So while they may both have participated in the murders, you think Sam is the dominant,” Hotch summarized, a considering look on his face. “He copied their mother’s death to convince his brother to return to him and replace John with himself as the person whose desires he helps enact.” </p><p>“There must have been something to make him do that then,” JJ said. “Some stressor in his life that would have provoked his desire to take control of his brother away from their father.” She turned to look at Garcia, who shrugged. </p><p>“Sorry,” she said. “As far as I was able to find, there was nothing remarkable that occurred with Sam leading up to Jessica’s death. It was a couple years ago though, so there’s a good chance that whatever it was… we just don’t have any record of it.” She paused for a second, hesitating before she continued. “There’s one other thing,” Garcia said. “It’s weird though, and not something that Henrickson ever really pursued. It’s not something I can even really prove.” The team turned back to her as she looked down at her tablet.</p><p>“I spent a bunch of time going back and seeing if I could figure out where the Winchesters have been in the last couple of years, what towns and cities they might have hit up. What I was able to find was patchy, there’s months where I have no idea where they were, but of the places I was able to confirm they were before, there was nearly always a string of strange murders that happened before they arrived in town.” The room went dead silent with this additional information. </p><p>“Fuck,” Morgan said. </p><p>“The killings also always stopped while they were in town, and didn’t continue when they left,” Garcia said. “I didn’t want to bring it up before we’d talked about everything else, I just wasn’t sure, it was so weird, and so many of the cases are based on really flimsy records and reports, but it looks like maybe…”</p><p>“They’re vigilantes,” Emily finished. Garcia nodded. Everyone took a long second to digest that. </p><p>“What if they have two disperate, but complementary, motivations?” Rossi said, and the team looked towards him. He leaned forwards, clasping his hands together. “Dean was raised to protect his brother, but also to hunt what his father believed to be monsters. If the people John decided were monsters were actually people who <i>were</i> hurting other people, then while the actual monsters aren’t real…” </p><p>“The deaths that provoke Dean into killing might be,” JJ finished. “Within the framework of his beliefs, he could convince himself that human killers are monsters.”. Rossi nodded. </p><p>“Based on what you’ve said about Sam though, Reid, with him asking what makes men monsters… I don’t think he has that same belief system.” Reid shook his head then paused, a thoughtful look on his face.</p><p>“What if he’s taking advantage of his brother’s delusions, and his central purpose of protecting him, to indulge his own compulsions, while also killing other murderers?” Reid said. There was a long moment of silence as they all considered this new hypothesis. It held up, Emily thought, comparing it to the information that Garcia had shared with them. She had spent much less time with Sam and Dean in 1993 than Reid had, but she trusted his judgement. If he’d seen something in Sam back then that would make him believe that the adult version of him was capable of what they were theorizing, she was inclined to believe him. In which case, that might mean that while Dean had believed his father, embracing his delusions as his own, Sam had seen through them, had dismissed them and developed his own belief system. </p><p>If John was the dominant to Dean’s submissive, as Sam got older he would have likely grown more and more resentful of his father’s hold over the brother that he would see as belonging to him. Leaving for school was likely a way to escape the inevitability of him or his father killing each other, which would have held the risk of turning Dean against him. But going to university hadn’t tempered his own urges, or his desire to have his brother back under his control, so he’d devised a way to lure his brother away from their father, to bring him wholly under Sam’s sole control. It was the perfect set up, Emily realized, for Sam to indulge his own urges while satisfying both Dean’s delusions and his need to protect and care for his brother. Sam was able to kill, and direct Dean to kill, whenever and whoever he wanted. All he had to do was convince his brother that Sam’s preferred victims were killers and, whether or not it was true, Dean would then assist Sam in his killings. </p><p>“Alright,” Hotch said, interrupting Emily’s thoughts. “Going off that as our working theory, we’ll need to go through everything Henrickson had, and all the additional information Garcia found. There’s something in here that will help Henrickson locate them, we just need to find it.” </p><p>In a flurry of scraping chairs and rustling paper, they got to work.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: non-explicit reference to underage sex work, descriptions of physical effects of (presumed) child abuse including physical abuse and neglect</p></blockquote></div></div>
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